St. George IM Bike Course Trial

This summer is just flying past! It's been fun, but super busy, and I hate to see it go!

Last Tuesday (I can't believe it's already been a week) I met Amy and Heather at a little splash park in Lehi so our kids could all play.

It's always a good time when there's water and cousins involved. The girls all slept over at Amy's house that night too so they were just in heaven.

Then Friday, after my 10ish mile long run, we drove down to St. George to stay with our friends. Their son was getting baptized on Saturday and we wanted to be there for that. I brought my bike, though, so before the baptism, I was able to get my long ride in.

I went for 3 hours and covered 40.5 miles. That's almost exactly the same as last weekend!

Starting in Santa Clara, I rode up through Gunlock to Veyo then back down through Snow Canyon. Most of that ride is part of the course for the St. George Ironman, and man was it hard! It took me 2 hours to get to Veyo, which was only 22 miles. That was probably the hardest 22 miles I've ever ridden, and you have to do it twice in the Ironman! While I was riding it, I decided that whatever inkling of desire I had to do St. George Ironman was now gone. There were a couple points where I didn't want to go on, and I felt like crying. Yeah. Plus I lost my gel flask somewhere and didn't notice until I was halfway up "The Wall," and starting to think about taking another serving. There was no way I was going back down to look for it so I was pretty hungry by the time I got home.

But like I said last week, I'm not used to hills anymore. I haven't been training on them at all. I think if I rode a lot of hills, it might not be totally unforeseeable to do that twice! Maybe. Someday. Ouch. But not in the near future. I don't know, but I can say that whoever came up with that course is mean.

When it took me 2 hours to get to Veyo, I was worried that by the time I got back, George would be hungry and that I wouldn't have much time to get ready for the baptism. Amazingly, when I got home, George was still asleep and I had just enough time to get ready, even after a 20 minute recovery run and a good stretch. Nice!

Our friends have the same amount of kids as us who are about the same ages and they love to play together. Their youngest is 3 months older than George. That's right, I said older. Look at how little and sweet she is! It was so fun to see her and imagine what George will be like in a few months. George was very interested in her. I think she help him improve his crawling a little bit too.

Here's the young man who was baptized. I can't believe he's 8! He and Mindy have been friends since he was born. She and Ethan were both really excited to see him. It had been way too long since we'd seen them!

When we got home Sunday night, I realized that my new aero bar pads had blown off during the drive! What?! Somehow they made it to Heber and back, then down to St. George, but they didn't make it back. I was devastated when I saw this. The guy at the bike shop who sold them to me even told me I should put some adhesive on them or at least put a rubber band around them when they were on the car. I had totally forgotten about that, and now I felt so stupid that I was going to have to go back in there to see if they had any more. The crazy thing is that he was surprised they had them in the first place and I was so happy to just get them instead of having to order them, so I was pretty doubtful they'd have more. When I called them the next day, they confirmed this. So I've got some ordered, but they're supposed to take a week and a half! UG!

Anyway, the fun thing about getting home was that there was a package of new diapers there waiting for us! They are sunbaby brand, and I got 12 of them in several different colors for $60 which is a great price. They are so cute! I'm excited to try them out!